Abstract

The crisis in Basque Fueros had started 15 years before Napoleon's entrance into Spain in 1808. In the Bayonne Assembly summoned by him to inform on his draft Constitution for Spain, the deputies from the four Basque provinces skilfully argued and manoeuvred in favour of maintaining the Fueros and an exemption from the Constitution, getting Napoleon to maintain the Basque political regime in article 144 of that Constitution, and put off its modification or reform.